Thursday, December 13, 2012

I told you so......

Yep, I sure did!!! As a special needs parent, a wife, a daughter, one of the many things I have learned is to choose my battles wisely. This is often hard for me because I am a firm believer of letting my opinions be known, and I don't often like to back down. The older I get however, the easier it gets. So the battle I chose to let slide was the video game battle.
We are a "techy" family. We love our video games and devices. Liam especially LOVES his video games. He would play them for days if we let him! (we don't!) He got a baby video game system for his first Christmas, he was 7 months old. He LOVED it! It was called Little Leaps Grow With Me Learning System. You can check it out here. He then grew out of that and moved on to the VTech Vmotion. (Kind of like a Wii for kids but with learning games) He grew bored of that within a year, moved up to the Wii, and that took about a year for him to grow tired of, so he has now "graduated" to the Xbox 360.

I miss the days when we would play this together :(

This is where the battle ensued. There are MANY games for the Xbox that I as a mother, DO NOT like. His dad didn't agree with me. His argument, "you don't censor his music, and cable tv is awful, so this is no worse." Now, I don't censor his music. If the song has multiple F words, then I do skip it, but otherwise I let it play. I feel that music is an artistic expression, made to invoke feelings and I don't think it deserves censorship. Liam loves ALL music (but slow and "sad") and he knows NOT to repeat the cuss if he hears it. As far as tv, we do have cable, and yes, it is horrible at times! Even if we censor the content, a nasty commercial will slip thru every now and then. So it is for that reason that I chose not to argue with the Mr.
Now, those who know me, know I am a worrier! I worry A LOT!!! I worry about worrying. I worry that worrying about worrying is unhealthy. I worry that my mom (also a worrier) will worry about me worrying. So yeah, I am neurotic and I worry a lot! I worry about how these games will affect Liam. However, he is REALLY good at them. His faves (other than Skylanders) of course those damn "killing games." See below...

these are just a few of his faves!!!

So yeah, my son is 6 going on 16 in so many ways, but I was not comfortable with this,. Regardless, I shoved my thoughts back in my mind, swallowed my pride, and I stepped back. I told the Mr., "Fine, your call, but I will say I told you so if this blows up in our face!"

Fast forward a few months....Liam says, "Momma, my mind has scary pictures and I don't like it!" He wouldn't go into detail, but I knew something was up. He quit playing with his army guys, and he would get mad if his dad wanted to play one of the above games. So I pulled hubs aside, and told him, the games are done, put them away!!!! Liam still won't go into detail about the pictures, just that they have to do with the games. I am assuming he is replaying the games in his mind (damn photographic memory) and let's face it, they are graphic!!!!

So the games are put away. I got to say, "I told you so!" Liam was on the phone with his brother who asked for Call of Duty Black Ops 2 for Christmas (btw, the kid and his uncle beat it in one night when we rented it from the Redbox), and Liam already informed his brother, "you can't play that here. It's bad and I don't like it! Besides, we already conquered it!"

So that's that..... See, my worries were right......hubs needs to listen to me more ;)